Mystery of Yala River deepens as four bodies are identified

Two families have positively identified four of 23 bodies retrieved from River Yala.

A family from Kipkelion in Kericho County identified body of their 37-year-old son Philemon Chepkwony who went missing on December last year.

Chepkony’s family also identified the body of one of his missing friends, Peter Matuku, whom Chepkony was travelling with in his car on the day they disappeared.

According to the family, Chepkwony and the three friends had been kidnapped on December 2, last year.

The vehicle they were travelling with was later found abandoned in Gilgil, Nakuru County.

The deceased brother, Meshack Chepkowny, said that his brother’s body had torture marks.

“Inside the mortuary, we discovered that he had been tortured and even identifying him positively at first was very difficult,” he said.

Siaya County Health Executive Dismas Wakla said that Chepkwony’s family has been instructed by the hospital to visit Yala Police Station, which has the legal custody of all the bodies, for the processing of their claim, of positive identification.

Another body that was identified was that of Erastus Ndirangu.

According to his family, Ndirangu was last seen in November on his way to Nakuru from Nairobi.

The two families are among many more families that are trooping to the Yala morgue with hopes of finding their loved ones.

However, families that positively identify the bodies will have to wait longer as police conduct investigations and for the pathologist to conclude post mortem in a bid to establish the cause of deaths.

According to the police, they are yet to establish crucial leads on the bodies such as age since some of them had decayed or badly mutilated.

Meanwhile, the River Yala bodies expose has put a spotlight on the police for delaying investigations and subsequently ignoring the plight of families who have missing kin.

Yala Sub County Hospital says divers recovered over 20 dead bodies from the river over the past year. Most of the bodies were retrieved in the last three months of the year 2021.

However, police have contradicted the hospital reports, especially on the timelines when the bodies were recovered.

Police refuted reports by the hospital and human rights groups that over 20 bodies were lying uncollected at the hospital’s morgue.

The hospital, while maintaining that there are bodies still lying in the facility, disputed burying other bodies in a mass grave.

Additionally, the hospital has asked the police to cease transferring bodies to the facility following an influx of unclaimed bodies recovered from Yala River.

The hospital’s management advised authorities to transfer bodies to Siaya County Referral Hospital saying the capacity of its morgue had been overstretched.

Medical Superintendent Dr Bruno Okall said the hospital’s morgue was not able to accommodate more bodies.

In the meantime, a special forensic investigations team attached to the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) headquarters was dispatched to River Yala to speed up probe and identification of bodies that were retrieved from the river.